CHESS WARS: Hans Niemann Lawyers Up And Is Suing Magnus Carlsen For A Casual $100,000,000 After Cheating Allegations
TIM VIZER. Getty Images.Turns out that chess doesn't need enforcers, it just needs lawyers.
Now this may come as a shock to most of you, but I didn't go to law school. But after reading through that lawsuit, I kind of want to get into law. Because it was pretty much 44 pages of Hans Niemann roasting the shit out of Magnus Carlsen.
Quick reminder here in case anybody missed it. Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen are a couple of chess players who have been embroiled in a cheating conspiracy for the past month and a half at this point. Magnus Carlsen is the top ranked chess player in the world, and when he lost a match to 19-year-old prodigy Hans Niemann, he quit the tournament and alluded to the idea that Niemann must have cheated in order to win. That allegation then spiraled into the biggest (maybe only) story in the chess world, involving a ton of hilarious accusations like the use of vibrating anal beads to execute the cheating.
Now that that's out of the way, we get to this lawsuit. Hans Niemann is seeking $100,000,000(!!!) in damages from Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com, and Hikaru Nakamura who is another chess grandmaster but mostly a streamer now. Let me just say that again. ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. And after running through the lawsuit real quick, I don't think $100M is enough. Give this man everything that Carlsen and Chess.com are worth, because it was awesome. Here are some of my favorite parts of the lawsuit.
Notorious for his inability to cope with defeat, Carlsen snapped. Enraged that the young Niemann, fully 12 years his junior, dared to disrespect the “King of Chess,” and fearful that the young prodigy would further blemish his multi-million dollar brand by beating him again, Carlsen viciously and maliciously retaliated against Niemann by falsely accusing Niemann, without any evidence, of somehow cheating during their in-person game and demanding that the organizers of the Sinquefield Cup immediately disqualify Niemann from the tournament.
"Notorious for his inability to cope with defeat" is just lawyer speak for "this dude's a baby back bitch". From the outside looking in, it's seemed like Magnus Carlsen has just been a little bitch about this entire situation. If he really believed that the only way Hans Niemann could beat him was by cheating, then he'd step up and go for a rematch with the most advanced anti-cheating technology available. But instead of rematching him and proving that he'd whoop his ass in a clean match, Magnus Carlsen quit after the very first move the next time these two guys played each other. So yeah, I'd say he has an inability to cope with defeat.
Niemann not only beat Carlsen; Niemann embarrassed Carlsen by defeating him with the black pieces and playfully taunting him during and after their match. He also shattered Carlsen’s historic 53-game unbeaten streak and made it practically impossible for Carlsen to ever achieve a 2900 FIDE performance rating. What is more, Niemann handed Carlsen this stunning upset while Carlsen was in the midst of negotiating and finalizing the Merger to solidify Carlsen’s chess empire around his Play Magnus brand.
Holy shit! Just piling it on here. This kid has some balls. Not only did he beat Carslen, he embarrassed him. I don't know how lawsuits work but I really hope these two dudes end up in a courtroom together soon and that line gets read out loud.
And the last line of that paragraph there is important. Here's a little more on that before we get into why.
Notably, this was not the first time that Niemann beat Carlsen at chess, just the first time he did so at a FIDE-sanctioned event. Niemann’s upset victory effectively dashed Carlsen’s two remaining statistical ambitions, namely: achieving a 2900 FIDE performance rating for the first time in history; and breaking his own world-record unbeaten streak in FIDE-sanctioned events. These accomplishments, if achieved, would have solidified Carlsen as arguably the greatest chess player of all time and made his burgeoning chess empire even more valuable. Making matters worse for Carlsen, Niemann embarrassed Carlsen by playfully taunting him during his post-match interview.
Again, I love the fact that this is a legal document and they made sure to keep hammering at the fact that Niemann embarrassed Carlsen. But here's where I think Hans Niemann really makes a case for himself.
Chess.com is apparently the biggest entity in chess. They sponsor tournaments, you can play online matches, it's just pretty much the worldwide leader of any chess related shit. So Magnus Carlsen has his own little version of Chess.com which is called "Play Magnus". In August, Chess.com had agreed to purchase and merge with Play Magnus for something around $83 million, but there were still some negotiations going on. Pretty much right after that agreement was made, Hans Niemann smoked the shit out of Magnus Carlsen in the Sinquefield Cup, which is the match that started this entire ordeal.
So now you have Magnus Carlsen in the middle of these negotiations about to get some serious "fuck you" money with this Chess.com merger, but then gets spanked by a 19-year-old kid at this tournament. Now his unbeaten streak is over. Now he can't get whatever the fuck a 2900 FIDE performance rating means. I suppose that's just like a Madden rating. But if a final number was never agreed upon, maybe that loss just took a few million out of his pocket at the negotiating table. The only way to make that money back would be to get the entire world thinking this dude cheating. I'd make up lies about somebody throwing anal beads up their ass while playing chess for wayyyy less than a few million dollars.
Now as much as I'd love to see this actually go to court and as much as I'd love to see a $100,000,000 payment get thrown out there…I still think the only way to truly end this matter is for a match of the century. Hans Niemann vs Magnus Carlsen. Both dudes completely naked and searched to make sure there's no possible way of cheating. Winner gets to be the CEO of Chess.com, loser leaves town forever. One game and one game only. Let's make it happen. The people deserve to get a proper ending to this saga.